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My wife and kids would tell you I like gadgets, especially electronic gadgets. When you combine that with my book addiction, I always knew e-readers would entice me. It was more a question of when (how long I might be able to resist) than if.
Blame Barnes & Noble. I’m going to be sipping the e-reader Kool-aid. Prompted by a gift card and the new $149 version, I ordered a Nook Wi-Fi Tuesday, which should arrive by the end of the week. (An aside to B&N: Please make up your mind whether it is a “nook” or a “NOOK”. Your website uses both.) Since I’m not on the AT&T network and likely won’t be for at least a year or more, if ever, the additional $50 for the 3G version didn’t make sense. This is also a digital device that seems more amenable to sharing with my wife than an mp3 player or the like, particularly with the ability to use memory cards.
I know I won’t abandon “real” books. Yet the fact I ordered a Nook https://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/amazon/amazoncom_crash_drives_publishing_world_batty_166210.asp“>brought Amazon to its knees in shock and mourning. But it need not worry too much. I haven’t ordered any books for the Nook and may not for a while. One of the other attractions of the Nook is that it supports both PDF and ePub formats. There’s plenty of books out there in those formats (some of which have been residing on my laptop or desktop for a while) and I’ll probably try those out first.
But I will try to approach this with an open mind — especially since I don’t want or need a $150 toy sitting around unused. Plus, given the number of books now in the public domain, this may help me get closer to completing the Books of the Century reading challenge I started. And, who knows? Maybe I’ll like it.
Oh, oh. Sounds like the Kool-aid is kicking in and so far I’ve only smelled the fumes.
The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
B.F. Skinner, Contingencies of Reinforcement
A British author told the BBC last week that in light of the impact of government budget cuts, libraries should consider charging a small fee for checking out a book. Michael Jecks, who bills himself as “Master of the Medieval Murder Mystery,” suggested a charge of 15 pence (currently about 22 cents). He doesn’t believe the fee should be universal, suggesting those under the age of 18 or on means-tested benefits be exempt.
There’s no question budget concerns exist for U.S. libraries. According to the American Library Association, 24 states reported cuts in state funding for public libraries between fiscal 2009 and fiscal 2010 and nearly half were more than 11 percent. Significantly, that reflects state funding. The vast majority of funding for public libraries comes at the local level, where finances certainly are no better. In fact, the fiscal 2008 public libraries survey indicates my local library received 96.5 percent of its funding from local government. By the way, the Census Bureau reported earlier this year that in 2008 just under 25 percent of American households had at least one person getting means-tested government benefits.
Are borrowing fees something public libraries should consider? Some fees already exist. For example, my local library charges nonresidents a “membership” fee between $5 and $6 month to borrow materials, depending on the length of the membership. Still, the concept of charging for library books goes against the grain of our views of public libraries. We tend to consider free public libraries in almost the same vein as free public education (and, from my perspective, for good reason). Still, most scholars agree that publicly funded free libraries were a 19th century invention for America. Great impetus came from Andrew Carnegie, who provided funding for libraries in more than 1,400 American communities. Among the conditions for those funds was that the community annually provide 10 percent of the cost of construction to support library operations and the library provide free service to all.
There is some surface appeal in Jecks’s thought that borrowing fees are “just a small contribution” towards funding libraries and “it’s not the sort of amount which is going to break anybody’s bank.” Certainly, exempting those under 18 and, for lack of a better term, the needy makes sense. Still, what are the chances requiring someone to prove they’re receiving government support will discourage them from checking out material? Or that someone slightly above whatever standard is set may be in a situation where it’s a choice between checking out library books and a half gallon of milk? Quite frequently, these are the people who may be most in need of what libraries offer. In fact, this year’s State of America’s Libraries report from the ALA concluded that since the recession, local libraries have “become a lifeline.”
User fees make sense for certain things, such as swimming pools or a surcharge on tickets to a sporting or cultural event held in a government-funded facility. But libraries are more than just a quality of life issue; they are crucial to a community’s strength and survival. As someone said earlier this year, “Cuts to libraries during a recession are like cuts to hospitals during a plague.” Among the worst things we could do is reduce public support and try to replace it with alternatives that could do more harm than good.
In short, the library was a place where most of the things I came to value as an adult had their beginnings.
Pete Hamill, “D’Artagnan on Ninth Street“
Blog Headline of the Week
Interesting Reading in the Interweb Tubes
Bookish Linkage
Nonbookish Linkage
I think that, like in my writing, reality is always a soap bubble, Silly Putty thing anyway.
Philip K. Dick, September 1976
It is evidently cease and desist week:
A website recently received a 12-page cease and desist letter — for a fake product it launched for April Fool’s day. Seems the site calling Canned Unicorn Meat “the new white meat” infringes on the National Pork Board’s slogan, “The Other White Meat.” Being good cyberspace denizens, Think Geek publicly apologized to the pork board “for the confusion over unicorn and pork–and for their awkward extended pause on the phone after we had explained our unicorn meat doesn’t actually exist.” (Lowering the Bar)
Lowering the Bar also reports that Times Square’s “Naked Cowboy” has sent a cease and desist letter to a woman calling herself the “Naked Cowgirl,” saying it infringes on his trademark.
Blawg Headline of the Week: Lawyers, Start Your Billing Clocks: Financial Overhaul Legislation Nears Passage
Couldn’t have said it better myself: “IF you’ve pleaded guilty to child abuse, and IF you’re lucky enough to be sentenced only to probation (a travesty in and of itself in my opinion), it’s probably a pretty bad idea to threaten to kill a judge, the judge’s children, and the parenting-skills and anger-management instructor you’re seeing pursuant to court order.”
“A culinary argument between a brother and sister about whether to use butter or margarine turned violent, resulting in an attack with a knife-edged barbecue spatula.” The cops should probably be happy it wasn’t after numerous rounds of trying to figure out “tastes great” or “less filling.” (BoingBoing)
Drunks do the funniest stupidest things: “A drunk driver [in New Zealand] trapped in his overturned car opened another can of beer while waiting to be rescued because he had ‘nothing better to do.'” (Jonathan Turley)
I speculate many others in the legal profession in Iowa, South Dakota, North Dakota, etc., share the sentiments expressed by U.S. District Judge Mark Bennett in an email this week: “In my 35 years of experience in the legal profession I have almost always been considerably under whelmed by East Coast law firms. I am not impressed by inflated rates and even more inflated billing practices, 6 lawyer to take a simple deposition, a total lack of civility, obstructionist discovery tactics at every turn, poor trial skills and unsurpassed arrogance.” (I would add a thumbs down to ATL editor Elie Mystal for saying he “had to Google South Dakota” to figure out it bordered Iowa. But then, that might show a lack of Midwestern civility.)
I submit that lawyers who know how to think but have not learned how to behave are a menace and a liability … to the administration of justice.
Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, May 18, 1971
Do you read book reviews? Do you let them change your mind about reading/not reading a particular book?
I’ve subscribed to the NYT Book Review for a number of years and, off and on, a variety of other book review (Bookforum) and book-oriented (The Believer) publications. And, of course, I have a number of book review and book-oriented blogs in my RSS reader.
If I know I am going to review a book, I don’t read reviews of it to avoid any sort of predisposition or influence. I also don’t read the reviews until after I have written my review.
Otherwise, I read a large number of reviews but their effect varies. Sometimes, it is simply that I don’t think the book will interest me. Other times, a favorable inclination created by one review may be offset by a couple others and vice versa. As much as I hate to admit it, though, I don’t really pay too close attention to who may have reviewed a book in the NYT or elsewhere to see what their track record with me might be. Like with the books themselves, there’s so many reviews and so little time.
…the prolonged,indiscriminate reviewing of books is a quite exceptionally thankless, irritating and exhausting job [that involves] constantly inventing reactions towards books about which one has no spontaneous feelings whatever.
George Orwell, “Confessions of a Book Reviewer”
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